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75% INCREASE OF ONLINE GAMBLERS IN A YEAR

28/08/2024 10:22:00 Sabelo Majola

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MBABANE – In a space of one year, online gamblers in the country have increased by at least 75 per cent.
This has raised concerns among members of the public in some sectors, who believe that this is a result of the high unemployment rate in the country, which stands at 35.4 per cent.
According to information shared by the Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Affairs, there were 220 000 registered online gaming users in April 2023 and 60 000 of those were active. In this context, active is defined as a user who placed at least one bet and one deposit in a given month. In April 2024, the figure ballooned to 385 000 registered online gaming users and 73 000 of them were active. This depicts an increase of 165 000 (75 per cent) online gaming users in a space of a year. The current registered online gaming users represent at least 25 per cent of the entire population, who opt for online gambling to make a quick buck.

It should be mentioned that the ministry collected over E9 million in levies from bookmakers and E48 000 in annual licence fees in the financial year 2023/24, as revealed by Communications Officer Baphelele Vilakati. “In the last 12 months, the Gaming and Licensing Board received four new applications for online gaming and two were granted,” she said.
Eswatini has at least three online gaming sites, which are MulaSport, eBet, 8Bet and the recently launched DiskiBet. These are dominated by students and the unemployed youth as evidenced by anecdotal evidence. While the financially-crippled working class are also gambling, anecdotal evidence shows that the unemployed youth and students are dominating the online gambling sites. Online gambling is any kind of gambling conducted on the internet and this includes virtual poker, casinos and sports betting. One of South Africa’s biggest unsecured lenders, Capitec, said in its results for the six months to end-August 2023, gambling transactions increased 35 per cent year-on-year, ‘putting further strain on household cash flow’.

An increasing number of consumers are resorting to gambling in a desperate attempt to lay their hands on cash, as the credit market in South Africa tightens in response to high bad debts, results from Capitec show. Clients rolling into debt review remained higher year-on-year, stabilising at these higher levels as revealed in the report.Yamkelo Dlamini, a third-year student of Limkokwing University of Creative Technology (LUCT), revealed that sometimes he relied on gambling earnings to buy commodities such as electricity units and grocery. He shared that he places bets at least two times a week and each time he placed a bet, he used E20 and he normally played the game known as Aviator. Dlamini said he had a high winning rate so far, but days were not the same as he would lose without registering any proceeds. “Sometimes I win money ranging from E150, E200, E800 to even E1 000, and besides commodities, I also use the money to pay rent,” he said.

Dlamini said he was introduced to betting by a friend and he had been hooked ever since, but he was not yet addicted as many other users, because he maintains the twice-a-week betting schedule. According to Dlamini, a great percentage of his age mates at school are into online gambling and that was evident because he was seeing a lot of them on betting-tip groups on social media, where a lot of them are members. Roffinin Thevede, a resident at Mahwalala, in Mbabane, won over E200 000 a few months back and he relayed that his life was changed instantly. Thevede was employed as a driver for school-going pupils around Mbabane, but as soon as he won the money, he did not see the reason to continue with the employment in which he was making slightly over E2 000 per month.

He said he invested the money in a business that generates way more than he earned while he was working as a driver and he even afforded a vehicle to assist in his business. “I was struggling financially and every day presented the same challenge, until I decided to try my luck in gambling. Luckily, I was blessed with a quarter of a million and I have not been the same since,” he said. He did, however, state that gambling can be addictive, so much that every time he got money, he would invest a certain percentage of it in gambling, which did not help, but worsened his situation, because he was losing more and winning less. It should be mentioned that if one has a strong desire to have an online gaming licence, they should be prepared to part with E1 million.

This is stipulated in the Gaming Fees Rules 2023, which act as regulations for the Gaming Act Control of 2022. The rules were published by the Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Affairs, through a gazette dated September 8, 2023. They incorporate the type of licence, registration or other matters under the Act and the fees payable to each. Lottery licences and casino licences are E350 000 and E300 000 respectively, while gaming machines operators pay a licence or registration fee of E200 000. The purpose of these rules is to regulate the licensing process and enforce compliance on all licence-holders and other gaming activities, by ensuring payment of all fees in accordance with the Act.